Social Insurance Principle Vital to Medicare, Group Argues

April 12, 2003
One of the more powerful aging groups is cautioning Congress not to abandon the social insurance principle as it tackles Medicare reform.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare supports improvements in Medicare that retain the social insurance nature of the program, Barbara B. Kennelly, the group's president said. “Society has benefited from Medicare’s universal coverage and we are all better off for this program,” she said in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee.

“We get hundreds of calls from seniors each week,” she said. “They want prescription drug benefit, but they do not want to give up the guarantee of coverage that comes with traditional Medicare. They do not want to sacrifice a system where everyone pays in and everyone has access to the same benefits, regardless of where they live.”

There is no evidence that private insurance can promise premiums that will be relatively stable from year to year, she said. “To seniors coping with chronic health problems, the assumption that private plans will give better care is an academic fantasy,” she said. “It may work in theory, but the history of the Medicare+Choice program has been quite different.”

The administration’s proposal of $400 billion over 10 years for changes in Medicare will cover but a fraction of the $1.8 trillion in prescription drugs that seniors are expected to need over the next decade. “But we hope that Medicare is improved in a way that allows us to build on this beginning and provide meaningful prescription drug coverage to every senior who needs it,” Kennelly said.